


The Unemployed Guardian of the Eastern Gate

by Mighty_Ant



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 6000 Years of Pining (Good Omens), Character Study, Hurt/Comfort, Love Confessions, M/M, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:49:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22029610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mighty_Ant/pseuds/Mighty_Ant
Summary: Their first meeting is terribly confusing because the great part of him that is still almost (almost being the key word) wholly, blindly loyal to Heaven rails because this is a Demon and he is an Angel. His instincts scream at him to flee, to attack, to do anything other than stand around and have a chat.But Aziraphale has been a rubbish angel from the start, giving away his flaming sword at the drop of a hat and not smiting the demons it was his duty to smite.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 52





	The Unemployed Guardian of the Eastern Gate

As far as first meetings go, it could’ve gone better 

Of course, it also could’ve gone much  _ much  _ worse. 

An angel and a demon—beloved and betrayed. There are no enemies so intrinsic, so innate. They are night and day, Heaven and Hell. Ineffable. 

But then. 

Crowley—Crawly, then—is not the first demon Aziraphale has met. They camp out outside Eden’s Eastern Gate after the Fall. Writhing and clambering over one another, desperate to see Her final creations in all of their glory. They are creatures of slime and sulphur from the deepest depths of the darkest pits, blistered black with boils and bloated with flies. 

Aziraphale’s sword is not for show. It was Her gift to him, God’s wrath crystalized in flame and placed in his hand to be used at his own discretion. He is given no instruction, no limitations or rules.  _ Guard the Gate and the Beings within the Garden,  _ he is told, without further specification. __

He supposes that another angel, a more daring sort, might swoop down and carry out Her wrath in full, smiting the demons outside the gate until none dare return. But Aziraphale is not the daring sort and try as he might, he can’t bring himself to kill them. To his sheer dumb luck, the moment he appears with flaming sword in hand they scatter, burying deep into the Earth and sand.

Later (about a millennium or so after the fact) he supposes that they were meant to be a distraction, so that Crawly could enter the garden to tempt Eve right under his nose. 

So the next time Aziraphale goes to scare off another slinking pack of demons, the next thing knows both Adam and Eve have eaten of the Tree and his term as Guardian of the Eastern Gate has come to an abrupt end. All without ever using his God-given sword; he gives it away as soon as the opportunity arises, actually. It may have been fitted perfectly to his hand, molded to every bone, muscle, tendon and blood vessel, but it always burned his palm in a way that had nothing to do with the flame coating the blade. It made him feel ill to hold it, and he wonders what that means, if it was  _ made  _ for him. 

When he meets Crawly on the wall, he almost doesn’t believe it’s a demon he’s standing beside. Yes, the big black Serpent of Eden is a bit of a giveaway, but Aziraphale never expected a demon to have such magnificent black wings or hair that curls like the crimson flames of his sword. His gold eyes and slit pupils are a shock, but captivating in equal measure. Aziraphale has never seen eyes like his. 

Their first meeting is terribly confusing because the great part of him that is still almost ( _ almost _ being the key word) wholly, blindly loyal to Heaven rails because this is a  _ Demon  _ and he is an  _ Angel _ . His instincts scream at him to flee, to attack, to do something,  _ anything  _ other than stand around and have a chat. But Aziraphale has been a rubbish angel from the start, giving away his flaming sword at the drop of a hat and not smiting the demons it was his duty to smite. 

But perhaps Crawly is a rubbish demon too, for all that he leaves Aziraphale out of a job. The demons he’s met are hostile, even as they run from him. They don’t hold conversations or make witty comments and they certainly don’t smile awkwardly at that which is meant to be their mortal enemy. 

Aziraphale stands beside a demon as he will continue to do for six thousand years more. And even then, under the tiered layers of panic, there is a feeling of peace, of coming home, in the deepest part of his soul that he will refuse to understand or acknowledge for six millennia. The instincts he was born with create strict delineations in his mind; and Angel is an Angel and a demon is a demon, and to cross those boundaries is to Fall. 

Still, Aziraphale cannot deny that Crawly gleams in the waning sunlight, fit to entrance and dismay, as the first rain clouds come in. The conflict persists within him, the eternal struggle between Good and Evil and all that jazz. But all the same, he lifts his wing to shield a demon after being the first Angel to hold a civil conversation with one. 

He does not attack Crawly, as perhaps he should. He never will, at least if one doesn’t count words as weapons. Though as a future bookshop owner, he will learn that words are perhaps the most dangerous weapons of all. 

( _ I don’t even like you, _ he will say on a bandstand in six thousand years. It will be a lie, one he tells to keep Crowley away—keep Crowley safe. He will fail). 

There is future he does not yet see as he faces an empty desert and the world’s first rainfall. It is a future filled with ridiculous arguments in full plate armor, hours spent in criminally empty playhouses, conversations by a duck pond, and sad, golden eyes hidden behind inscrutable black glass. It is a future conjured from his deepest nightmares, if he were prone to sleep; choosing friendship over fealty, indulgence over absolution. Choosing to consort with a demon. So many choices for a being meant to be perfect and unchanged. It is an irony he will not appreciate for a few centuries yet, when Aziraphale finds himself enchanted by humans and the innovations they create. 

But again, that’s in the future. 

At the Beginning, he stands on the wall of the Eastern Gate after giving humanity the tool to create War with a demon who gave them the free will to choose what to do with it. 

  
  
  
  
  


The humans grow in number, huts turn to villages to towns to cities, and Aziraphale and Crowley continue to meet. 

Not that Aziraphale makes it easy for either of them. 

He forces himself to be wary of Crowley, to be distrustful of Crowley, because it scares him how easy it would be to do the opposite. To give into the Enemy. To give into the one who  _ should be  _ his enemy. But like two opposing poles they are drawn together again and again, meeting on every corner of the globe. 

Aziraphale plays it off. He doesn’t let himself buy into Crowley’s dismay at the mercilessness of Her flood, even as his own stomach roils. He pretends not to hear the note of genuine grief in Crowley’s voice as they bear witness to Jesus’ crucifiction. He pretends and pretends for quite a few centuries, until Crowley turns to face him in a crowded bar in Rome and the golden eyes Aziraphale has always denied admiring have been hidden behind inscrutable black lenses. 

It devolves from there. 

He starts to look for him in crowds, finds his head turning at any flare of red. He thinks he hears Crowley’s familiar drawl and searches for its source. Keeping an eye out for the Enemy, he tells himself, because Aziraphale is a masterful liar to no one but himself. But his body disobeys his mind at every turn, moving closer to Crowley, smiling at Crowley,  _ calling  _ for Crowley. It’s shameful of an Angel to be drawn to something so unholy, but try as he might he feels the years that go by without their meeting like a weight across his shoulders, growing progressively heavier. 

But he is no Atlas and the load lightens in an instant, as though brushed away by a cool breeze when he hears a murmur at his back. 

“There you are, Angel.” 

Aziraphale agrees to their Arrangement with fear choking him, burning him from the inside out, and he wonders if this is what hellfire feels like. Not because he fears Crowley. Rather, he is deeply, deathly, damnably  _ terrified  _ of the fact that he doesn’t. Quite the opposite, really. 

What a rubbish angel indeed. 

  
  


For six thousand years, Aziraphale has denied Crowley. First conversation, then friendship, and now holy water. 

Only the last was as much for Crowley’s sake as it was his own. He won’t let Crowley die because of his weakness, his inability to end their Arrangement on honest terms. He fears Heaven’s wrath, true, just as he fears going against God’s ineffable plan. However, increasingly it is the threat of Crowley coming to harm that haunts him. Whatever Gabriel and his lot would do to him, they would do tenfold, thousandfold, on one of their Fallen counterparts. Holy water would be a mercy, but it is a mercy Aziraphale denies because a world without Crowley in any form is not a world he wishes to live in. 

The half-truths and sputtered argument are a cowards way out, but Aziraphale has never been brave. He turns his back on Crowley but watches him walk away, and hopes that Crowley has had enough of him. That maybe now they can both be safe, if painfully alone. 

  
  
  


Smoke hangs thick in the air, ash and dust and the smell of burnt things clogging his senses. The church is rubble around them, and in the distance air raid sirens continue to wail. And Aziraphale can hardly breathe, though not from the detritus in the air. 

It hasn’t even been a century since he saw Crowley last, after their terrible fight at the duck pond. He’d thought..he’d thought that was  _ it _ . That he’d burned what bridges he’d tentatively allowed Crowley to build between them, and was out there somewhere creating mischief and forgetting all about stuffy, cowardly Aziraphale. 

But instead he watches in gobsmacked awe as Crowley unearths the bag of books he didn’t have to save, that Aziraphale  _ forgot _ to save, and their hands brush in the passing. 

“Just a little demonic miracle of my own,” Crowley says, like it’s nothing. There’s a devilish little smirk twisting his thin lips, for all that his voice is airy. 

Aziraphale watches the arrow straight line of Crowley’s shoulders as he turns and clambers down the rubble, his slim figure a solid black shape against the blue of night. Aziraphale watches him and realizes with crushing, breathless certainty that he loves him. 

He loves Crowley. It’s so obvious in hindsight, almost ridiculously easy to admit after six thousand years. It’s like he’s standing on the wall all over again, watching Adam and Eve struggle in the desert, feeling a little bit lost and a lot afraid. 

It goes without saying that he can never tell Crowley. It’s dangerous to even admit how he feels in the relative safety of his own mind, much less to utter them for him and Her to hear. Angels may Love but they cannot  _ love _ , not like humans do. It would be unnatural at best and sacreligious at worst, and like always, Aziraphale is  _ afraid _ . Afraid of Falling, afraid of failing, afraid for Crowley who isn’t the big bad monster he makes himself out to be. 

He trips on the rubble in his haste to meet Crowley at the Bentley. The flames dotting the churchyard reflect off his glasses in flickering crimson and gold, and Aziraphale aches at the familiarity of Crowley’s smirk. 

“Where to, Angel? The Ritz?” he offers, like it isn’t already long past curfew and the Nazis aren’t still dropping bombs on the city. He’s hanging off of the open passenger door, smirk widening to a full blown smile that hits Aziraphale like a punch to the sternum. He wonders with no little pain how he never realized he was in love with this ridiculous being before. 

“To the shop, I should think,” Aziraphale responds with a sniff he purposely makes haughty. 

He’s rewarded with Crowley’s snort of laughter. “Oh of course! My apologies.”

Slipping into the Bentley feels like coming home, like taking that first step into his bookshop and off hectic streets. It’s almost too easy to forget that he was held at gunpoint less than ten minutes ago. 

“How is the old girl anyway?” Crowley asks once he’s slipped into the driver’s seat beside him. “Psychologically scar anyone lately for trying to buy a book?”

Aziraphale has to nearly bite his tongue to avoid saying,  _ The shop’s been lonely without you in it.  _

“I haven’t needed to,” he says instead, huffy as anything, “that’s the only good thing to come out of these raids; no one can be bothered to stop by.”

Crowley laughs again, just a short burst of delighted sound as he starts the engine and speeds toward Soho. 

“You are something else, Angel,” he says. 

Aziraphale thinks Crowley means it to be an insult, but the wondering way he says it takes away any bite. It’s a familiar softness, just like their friendship, and it’s as terrifying as Aziraphale remembers. 

  
  
  
  


After a disappointingly long day spent following a lead on a first edition Chaucer that led nowhere, Aziraphale is looking forward to curling up in his armchair with a cup of cocoa and a good book. He’s been considering picking up one of Adam’s additions to his collection; even  _ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe  _ is starting to sound promising after the day he’s had. 

So it’s with some alarm that he makes it back to his bookshop and finds the door unlocked. It isn’t so long since the end of the world that wasn’t, and despite his and Crowley’s game of switcheroo affording them freedom on Earth sometimes he can’t help but feel as though he’s waiting for the rug to be yanked out from under his feet. 

He still fears Uriel grabbing him when he rounds a street corner, turning around to find Gabriel standing far too close and smiling a smile that doesn’t reach his lavender eyes as he informs Aziraphale in that forcibly bright tone of his that the jig is up, Crowley (the  _ real  _ one this time) is bound for a holy water bath and Aziraphale has been granted the pleasure of watching before they dispose of him as well. 

But breaking into the bookshop is too overt for their tastes. Gabriel and his lot prefer the element of surprise, and it is only Aziraphale’s certainty in that knowledge that keeps him from running back out the door. It’s far more likely that some keen-eyed human realized what a handful of Oscar Wilde first editions were worth and decided that breaking and entering was a reasonable course of action. 

“Hello?” Aziraphale says as he carefully closes the door behind him. “I’m afraid if you’re looking to buy something you’re quite out of luck.”

There’s the sound of clinking glass coming from his study at the back of the shop, and he makes his way over to it. Of course, he nearly trips on an empty bottle first, barely managing to catch his footing on a dusty bookshelf. 

“What on Earth…?”

He bends down to pick up the bottle. The brown glass is unmarked and rather old, judging by the heavy, stained state of it. He takes a cautious sniff and nearly throws the bottle to be rid of the stench, sour and sharp like ethanol left out in the sun. He recognizes it now as moonshine that Crowley finagled out of the states sometime during Prohibition and presented to Aziraphale in the late ‘40s and still threatened to break out every few years, even going so far as to open the bottle just to make him gag. 

But what could it be doing on his floor, utterly empty?

A quiet sniff draws Aziraphale’s attention over to his couch, hidden by a tall stack of books. He rounds the perilous stack and finds Crowley sitting on the floor, his back against the couch and long legs stretched out on the rug. There are a few more empty bottles surrounding him, including the one clenched in his hand, trembling as he raises it to his lips. 

Crowley grunts when he discovers nothing in the bottle, and his arm falls limp back into his lap. His face is pale as parchment and his eyes, unobscured by his glasses, are red and glassy. Aziraphale has never seen him in such a state and it fear twists in his gut like a knife. 

“My dear,” he murmurs, stepping out from behind the stacks. “What have you done to yourself?”

Crowley’s eyes go wide at the sight of him, the white pronounced around his gold irises. 

“Angel,” he slurs, fumbling for the couch cushions in a clumsy attempt to stand. His vocal chords sound like they’ve been ground in sand and drenched in the rotgut he drank. “You’re—you’re here.”

“Of course I’m here,” Aziraphale replies, approaching Crowley warily. “This is my bookshop. Now that he’s revealed himself, the demon has begun twitching like a caged animal, trying and failing to stand again. For all of his frantic energy, he doesn’t look away from Aziraphale, not for a moment. 

“Why are you doing here?” he asks, keeping his tone light. “Did I forget we made plans?”

“No, no plans.” Crowley says with great difficulty. He waves a hand like he can pull the words out of thin air. “Was at a bar. Same one I went to after....fire. Didn’t mean to go back. Didn’t mean to come  _ here _ .”

He’s becoming increasingly panicked, voice raw and his expression as vulnerable as Aziraphale has ever seen it. Aziraphale thinks nothing of kneeling at his side, his earlier anxiety churning through him like a concentrated storm. Still, he does his best to keep his tone gentle, palms up and open to put Crowley at ease. He still doesn’t know what’s  _ wrong _ . 

“You’re welcome here whenever you like, you know that,” Aziraphale chides, tries for something teasing. “Especially when you’re finally going to rid me of that awful moonshine.”

Crowley bobs his head. “Tasted bad, yeah. Didn’t mean to drink it. Was relieved, though, when the shop was here. I thought it was...thought you were…”

“You thought I was what?” Aziraphale whispers, something ice cold freezing the storm of nerves within him. Crowley mentioned a fire. That night they sat together on a frigid metal bench, waiting for a bus and for a way to save themselves to appear, he’d said that the shop burned down. He’d said it with such grief, as though more than just cherished books and trinkets had burned; he said as though Aziraphale had burned too. 

“Angel,” Crowley says, his voice breaking under the weight of the single word. “ _ Angel _ .”

“I’m here,” Aziraphale says at once, and he clutches at Crowley’s pale, shaking hands. “I’m here, love.” 

The endearment slips out without thought, so natural that Aziraphale could never regret it. He does regret the millennia of fear, regrets not telling Crowley sooner and putting that look of devastation on his wrecked face. 

Six thousand years ago, Crowley lead humanity to Knowledge; to free will. Aziraphale seems to have unwittingly followed them in its pursuit. 

“Love?” Crowley repeats in a whisper. He shudders against Aziraphale, lank hair dropping into his eyes. “But you...you can’t...with me?”

Tears burn Aziraphale eyes and the back of his throat, but he forces a smile in spite of the pain.

“I’m a rubbish angel, surely you know that by now. But all the better for it. Now, sober up, love. I have something rather important to tell you and I would like you to actually remember this conversation in the morning.”

  
  
  



End file.
